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Meet Rick Gates, the Manafort protégé indicted in Russia probe

Rick Gates, former campaign aide to Trump, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP

Rick Gates, along with Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, has been indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Gates has been described by the New York Times as Manafort's "protégé," and retained a central role in Trump's campaign and inaugural committee thanks to his mentor.

Get smart: "[He could] go to jail because his long-term partner decided to go work for Donald Trump," Paul Rosenzweig, former deputy secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, told Axios. "What he did likely would not have seen the light of day...He's my Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer squared character in this drama...the man whose life is ruined by being sucked into the Trump tornado."

Timeline of Gates' ties to Manafort and the Trump campaign:

Roughly 30 years ago: Gates met Manafort when he worked as an intern at the then-powerful lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.

2006: Gates joined Manafort's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, where they took on Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a client. Their relationship with Deripaska later crumbled after Deripaska accused Gates and Manafort of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments without declaring what it was being used for, per the Washington Post.

Spring 2016: Gates followed Manafort to the Trump campaign, and played an integral role at the RNC where Gates became the fall guy for Melania Trump's plagiarized speech.

August 2016: Manafort quit the campaign amid scrutiny over his financial ties, but Gates stayed on as a liason to the RNC, before moving to the lobbying group, America First Policies, that was created to advance Trump's agenda.

March 2017: Gates' ties to Manafort led to him being forced out of the lobbying group. He's now reportedly working directly for one of Trump's closest and wealthiest friends, Tom Barrack, per NYT.

Since linking up with Barrack, Gates has been a frequent White House visitor. But some staff noted that "his presence was conspicuous since the president doesn't even like him," per the Daily Beast. "Rick [just] wandered around," a Republican source told the Daily Beast. "My understanding is that [Trump] had no idea he was in the building otherwise he wouldn't be too happy."

What Gates is being charged with: The indictment reveals Manafort and Gates were charged on 12 counts, including money laundering, conspiring against the U.S., and false and misleading statements surrounding their offshore financial accounts. Note that the indictment does not make any reference to Russia's election meddling.

What to watch: Rosenzweig suggested that Gates might have more information than Manafort but emphasized that at the end of the day "we don't really know."

Self-driving lab head urges freeze after "nightmare" fatality

Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh. Photo: Jeff Swensen / Getty

Carmakers and technology companies should freeze their race to field autonomous vehicles because "clearly the technology is not where it needs to be," said Raj Rajkumar, head of Carnegie Mellon University's leading self-driving laboratory.

What he said: Speaking a few hours after a self-driven vehicle ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, Rajkumar said, "This isn't like a bug with your phone. People can get killed. Companies need to take a deep breath. The technology is not there yet. We need to keep people in the loop."

Why it matters: Virtually every major car company on theplanet, in addition to numerous startups and tech companies, are doing live testing of self-driving vehicles — and pushing policy officials to allow them to do so.

But Rajkumar said that ordinary people in addition to automakers and tech companies have developed far too much trust in self-driving technology simply because the cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles with only one fatality before this — a Tesla driver who slammed into the side of a truck last year.

Quote "This is the nightmare all of us working in this domain always worried about."

Trump, Sessions & GOP lawmakers to meet about sanctuary cities

The White House is hosting a roundtable on sanctuary cities Tuesday afternoon with the President, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen of the Department of Homeland Security, Republican lawmakers and others, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Conservatives tried to use this week’s massive government spending bill to cut federal funds from sanctuary cities, but they failed, according to sources involved in the process. But Trump officials want to use Tuesday’s event to highlight the issue and put pressure on cities that don't comply with federal immigration law enforcement.

The roundtable guest list:

Donald Trump

Mike Pence

John Kelly

Stephen Miller

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

ICE acting Director Tom Homan

Gene Hamilton, Counselor to the Attorney General

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)

Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ)

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA)

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)

Texas AG Ken Paxton (R-TX)

Arkansas AG Leslie Rutledge

Members of the law enforcement community

Big picture: The Department of Justice is already suing the state of California for the state’s “radical” sanctuary cities law. And In his speech on Monday, President Trump blamed sanctuary cities for releasing criminals, drug dealers and gang members back into society, claiming that "ending sanctuary cities is crucial to stopping the drug addiction crisis."

Shortly after, Sessions announced that the DOJ had filed a lawsuit against California, and personally attacked Shaaf in his speech, saying she endangered the lives of law enforcement to promote her "radical open borders agenda."